There’s a new villain in town. He is not a member of Mumbai’s infamous mafia, but a lanky 33-year-old robber who, with his rag tag band of ruffians, is the city’s most wanted jewel thief.

Mumbai, old-timers would say shaking their heads regretfully, is not what it used to be. Gone are those days when the images that the city conjured up were those of glamour and power. These days, it is seemingly another word for fear. The city has been reeling under a renewed spell of crime — ranging from break-ins and robberies to jewellery heists and murders.

And fear is no longer a don calling up a leading actor and extorting money; it’s waking up in the middle of the night to find men in masks.

The Subramaniams didn’t know what hit them. They woke up one night last month to find that they had been surrounded by six masked and armed dacoits. The men hammered 60-year-old M. Subramaniam, a resident of the northeastern suburb of Ghatkopar, and left with a booty worth Rs 68,000. A couple got robbed of their money, car stereo and credit cards when their car broke down in a central suburb three weeks ago. The list of robberies is an endless one.

To top it, the city’s new villain — a man called Suresh, alias Surya Baburao Shinde — is still at large, though members of his gang have been nabbed. Surya loots homes and shops and is known to celebrate his success by sacrificing animals before a deity, drinking its blood and feasting on its meat. A couple of weeks ago, while he and his gang were in the throes of one such celebration — six bulls were to be sacrificed on that occasion — at Katalwadi village in Osmanabad district, a Thane police crime branch unit managed to sniff them out. After a chase, three gang members were arrested, though ring leader Surya escaped.

In the last one year in the city, two jewellers were murdered and cash and jewellery worth Rs 9.5 crore were looted in over 43 cases of heists. Last week 10 homes in Asalfa village in Ghatkopar West got burgled in one night. A gang — arrested this week — consisted of men who robbed people coming in and out of banks in Andheri.

It’s not that Mumbai has suddenly become the country’s new crime capital. Figures provided by the police show that the incidence of crime has not taken a leap. But the city which for long years identified crime with the underworld is now seeing a sudden spate of crime affecting the middle class.

The Mumbai police insist that the situation is not very alarming. “If you compare the figures with those of last year, the numbers are almost the same,” says Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner of police, crime. While there were 1,396 cases of house break-in last year, the figure is 1,366 this year. Last year, 15 instances of dacoity were registered in the first seven months; there have been 17 dacoities so far this year.

Yet, clearly alarm- ed, the Maharashtra police is setting up 61 special anti-robbery squads to combat the menace. Beefing up the police force is one concern. Some 20,000 members of the 40,000-strong police force in Mumbai man a city of 15 million people. “We are training 1,700 recruits, while another 1,000 boys shall be recruited this year,” says Hemant Karkare, joint commissioner of police, administration.

Some 40 police vans boast of a state-of-the-art GPRS/GPS tracking system. The police hold that the instantaneous tracking system brings down the response time for the police from nine minutes to five minutes. “We are tracing a pattern of the robberies to deploy more vans in those areas that are prone to thefts and burglaries and robberies. We have realised that thieves are now targetting more households during the day than night so we need more patrolling in areas where house-breaking incidents are on the rise,” he says.

The police have come up with some innovative ideas, too. A police officer, for instance, roams around the northwestern suburbs at night with a tea kettle and chats with watchmen of several buildings to stop them from dozing off.

In the process, the Mumbai police have stumbled on several new gangs of robbers. Among them is a group of scrap metal thieves who broke into the New Mumbai studio of artist J.K. Chhillar and his wife Prayag and took off with 80 zinc metal plates that were carefully crafted with scenes from Meghdoot, poet Kalidasa’s famous literary work. The scrap metal thieves only loot metal objects such as zinc plates, utensils, pressure cookers and water taps.

Then there is santo- shkumar Pandey, a resident of Kalbadevi in south Mumbai who studied commerce at the government-run Sydenham College. Pandey is with a gang of robbers who looted jewellery shops.

And let’s not forget Surya, whose gang was known to kill with impunity. In March this year, it murdered two jewellers — one in Borivli and another in Santa Cruz in Mumbai. Surya’s gang generally went armed with choppers and other rustic weapons. Its usual modus operandi was to break open a window grill, push the smallest gang member in, who then opened the door from the inside.

Surya has nearly 30 cases of robbery and attempt to murder against him. He was released on bail four months ago, after which he and his gang shifted base to Thane and went on a robbing and killing spree. They killed two people in Owale village, one in Virar and another in Bhayandar (on the outskirts of Mumbai). Then on June 26, Surya and his men made their first daring foray into an upmarket area of Mumbai. When 52-year-old Chandanmal Soni opened his jewellery store in Waroda Road in Bandra West, little did he know what lay in store for him.

“I was alone. A little after 11.30 am three men entered the shop on the pretext of buying a gold ring,” says Soni. The next moment they had whipped out choppers from their bags and pushed him inside a bathroom. When he resisted, they hit his left hand with a chopper and decamped with jewellery worth Rs 10 lakh. “I lost one and a half kg of gold and my left hand has still not healed,” says Soni, adding that he has told his son to pick some other profession.

The police squarely blame the jewellers, pointing out that they need to instal their own security cameras and take other preventive measures. “Several jewellers also dabble in currency exchange and mortgage of gold ornaments; so they get all kinds of customers,” says a police official.

But Dinesh Jain, a member of the All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation, disagrees. “It is impossible for several of the jewellers to instal security alarms and hidden cameras. Security gadgets are very expensive. I would rather say that the police need to show their presence regularly in the areas where there are a lot of jewellers.”

The blame game goes on — while fear stalks Mumbai. And Surya is still out there somewhere.